Items I Have Found...
...On The Sidewalk On My Block And Taken Home For At Least A While In The Past Five Years.
--Five upright chairs, of which at least two would be worth moving to a new apartment. I'm sitting on a very sturdy, wooden upright chair right now that I think was built for either a church or a school: it has a shelf under the (low-ish) seat.
--Three armchairs. I've thrown them all out, over the years, but I really regretted throwing out the only semi-broken 196os futurish slingback lounge chair. If I'd had a power-drill to do the necessary dowel-based surgery, I would have saved it against the apartmental downsizing, despite the room it took up; it was that cool.
--Two Side Tables. Wood.
--One Metal Bed-End, useful for plant-entwining. (I can't say how many bed-ends I've looked at and passed by: at least 15.)
--Two desks. This was my roommate's doing; she scooped up some institutional furniture for her professional studio-to-come.
--Two small chests of drawers. See above.
--Eight bookshelves. One or two fit under the above, but the others are mine (some painted blue, others metal, others plastic, others proved unworthy, but still).
--One Tv-VCR commode. I got rid of this pretty quickly; it wasn't a convenient shape (four feet long, two high) after all.
--Two electioneering hustings. I had an idea that I would recover them to make screens.
--At least six detachable cabinets. I've retained two, which I spray-painted a nice green and am using to store Books I Don't Need Right Now in a space that not easily accessible.
--One 8x5 wool carpet, machine woven, but very clean and soft. (That's only the one I've picked up; there've been so many more.)
--Four giant, overstuffed cushions. Treating them with the suspicion they deserved got old, and I was glad to chuck them, finally.
--One wooden radiator-cover, with shelves, that fit my pipe-configuration exactly. Score!
--The gilt-ceramic lamp base that with a home-made pornographic lamp shade made a perfect present for a good friend.
--One full chest-of-drawers suitable for containing all my foldables: five drawers, four feet high. Wait, I found another nice one and gave it to a friend. I've seen others on my block that weren't as nice and ignored them.
AND TONIGHT---I brought home an awesome coffee table. It's a little battered, but it's solid wood and should stand up to another decade of abuse, at least. I would rather invest in an electric sander than chance commercial furniture prices any day of the week.
--Five upright chairs, of which at least two would be worth moving to a new apartment. I'm sitting on a very sturdy, wooden upright chair right now that I think was built for either a church or a school: it has a shelf under the (low-ish) seat.
--Three armchairs. I've thrown them all out, over the years, but I really regretted throwing out the only semi-broken 196os futurish slingback lounge chair. If I'd had a power-drill to do the necessary dowel-based surgery, I would have saved it against the apartmental downsizing, despite the room it took up; it was that cool.
--Two Side Tables. Wood.
--One Metal Bed-End, useful for plant-entwining. (I can't say how many bed-ends I've looked at and passed by: at least 15.)
--Two desks. This was my roommate's doing; she scooped up some institutional furniture for her professional studio-to-come.
--Two small chests of drawers. See above.
--Eight bookshelves. One or two fit under the above, but the others are mine (some painted blue, others metal, others plastic, others proved unworthy, but still).
--One Tv-VCR commode. I got rid of this pretty quickly; it wasn't a convenient shape (four feet long, two high) after all.
--Two electioneering hustings. I had an idea that I would recover them to make screens.
--At least six detachable cabinets. I've retained two, which I spray-painted a nice green and am using to store Books I Don't Need Right Now in a space that not easily accessible.
--One 8x5 wool carpet, machine woven, but very clean and soft. (That's only the one I've picked up; there've been so many more.)
--Four giant, overstuffed cushions. Treating them with the suspicion they deserved got old, and I was glad to chuck them, finally.
--One wooden radiator-cover, with shelves, that fit my pipe-configuration exactly. Score!
--The gilt-ceramic lamp base that with a home-made pornographic lamp shade made a perfect present for a good friend.
--One full chest-of-drawers suitable for containing all my foldables: five drawers, four feet high. Wait, I found another nice one and gave it to a friend. I've seen others on my block that weren't as nice and ignored them.
AND TONIGHT---I brought home an awesome coffee table. It's a little battered, but it's solid wood and should stand up to another decade of abuse, at least. I would rather invest in an electric sander than chance commercial furniture prices any day of the week.
Marilee Scott 2:05 AM
3 Comments:
Nice! -- We didn't see a whole lot of usable furniture on the street in Queens; but one very nice bit was a long low wooden table we found soon after Sylvia arrived. It turned out to be a bit too long for the space we had available, so i cut a section out of the middle and rejoined it with plates-n-screws; then painted it bright colors and stencilled alphabets, numbers, shapes on top. It is still serving as Sylvia's desk for another 6 months or so, at which point she will likely be too big for it.
A power drill is a handy tool to have and cheap if quality is not important, which it is not very for the occasional dowel-related repair
Wow, I've only been in my current apartment for nine months, but I'm well off your pace. I've gotten one broken (and also possibly a knock-off) Eames chair sans ottoman, and one folding wooden slatted chair which the same room mate who has heard of things like Eames chairs claims is from Ikea, though I can't find it on their site.
W/D, you live downtownish, right? I think pickings are slimmer there. And I suspect that I know exactly what kind of IKEA chair you found: we have a couple that a roommate actually bought new. They're compact and look nice, but are damnably uncomfortable to sit in.
Anacreon, you don't know what I would give for a power drill, an electric sander, and a bandsaw. It's just impracticable in my current apartment. Oh, the mischief I would make if I had a garage or a backyard!
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